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Obama blasts Senate health plan for its “fundamental meanness”

It’s no surprise to Barack Obama that Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but he wasn’t prepared for just how “mean” their replacement would be.

In a scathing Facebook post published Thursday, hours after Republican senators revealed their bill for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, Obama slammed Republicans for trying to rush through rolling back his signature legislation without holding any public hearings or debate. While he acknowledged getting rid of large parts of the Affordable Care Act is one of the Republicans’ key goals, Obama refused to even call their latest bill a “health care bill.”

“It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America,” Obama wrote. “Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family — this bill will do you harm. And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.”

Obama went on, “I still hope that there are enough Republicans in Congress who remember that public service is not about sport or notching a political win, that there’s a reason we all chose to serve in the first place, and that hopefully, it’s to make people’s lives better, not worse.”

The Senate’s version of the House plan calls for repealing all of the Affordable Care Act’s taxes, slashing hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, and excluding health care plans that cover abortion from federal subsidies, among other provisions. It remains unclear just how many people stand to lose coverage under the Senate bill, dubbed the Better Care Reconciliation Act, but the Congressional Budget Office found that the House bill will lead 23 million people to lose insurance.